Dragon Shield: Definitely 20% not 33%Namtar's Ward: Definitely remove HP cost or make it a 3-4 death protection when you need it.Tri-sword: 2 base damage, or 5 every two levels.

As for Taurog, he should just be revamped, here's some suggestions. Choice of the warrior: Sacrifice a max mana and gain 10 piety. Strength: Gain 3 base damage for 1 mp and 10 piety increasing by 10 each time. Magic shield: 5% magic res for 1 mp and 10 piety increasing by 10 each use. Piercing: Reduce all monsters physical resistance by 10% for 1 mp and 10 piety increasing by 20 each time. Unstoppable Fury: Death protection for 25 piety increasing by 15 each time. Champion: Become a Champion of Taurog and gain 30% damage and an additional base damage per level, but lose a mana each level for 100 piety. If you have no max mana you cannot use his boons and will not get his champion boost upon leveling.

I think this would make taurog much more interesting and useful as you would have to choose how to spend your mana on his boons and he no longer eats your inventory. Also this could create some interesting strategies like grabbing champion and switching to mystera or dracul to counteract the mana penalty. Or you could start with MA or Drac and rack up extra mana before hand.

Agreed; the current inventory+mana tradeoff on every boon means that once you've unlocked a fair number of preparations he's borderline worthless for most classes. If you have lots of spare inventory space or the loss of spellcasting ability means little to you (Monk and Berserker, respectively), he's a fairly solid deity. Otherwise, he's a piety farm and you never touch his boons unless you're in desperate need of melee fighting power.

Dragon Shield: Definitely 20% not 33%

Agreed; 33% is completely out of line, especially on the Paladin who can stack that with his class bonus for 53% physical resist out the door.

Namtar's Ward: Definitely remove HP cost or make it a 3-4 death protection when you need it.

Either would work. Namtar's Ward actually wouldn't be terrible if it could be purchased from a shop (it'd still be sub-par, but not useless). The biggest problem is that it needs to be brought in as a preparation, meaning you are forced to take the penalty at every level if you want to use this item. Taking long-term penalties at regular intervals is just suicidal.

Tri-sword: 2 base damage, or 5 every two levels.

I'd actually rather the Tri-sword's effect be multiplied by your current level, rather than applied at each level-up as a permanent bonus. That way there wouldn't be the massive incentive to convert it in the end-game, and buying it from a shop would make more sense. 2 x level makes sense. Similarly, the Troll Heart needs a buff. Something in the range of 3-5 HP per level would be more appropriate.

I think venom sword also needs some tweaking, at very least a gold cost decrease. It's no longer a very good preparation, since it's not very good on low-level characters anymore, so you want to buy it in the dungeon. However, like the berserker blade, its a bit too pricey unless you're a Tikki Tooki follower. Same goes for the TT poison boon, it's really more of a 25 piety boon now with the poison nerf.

Choice of the Warrior: Sacrifice a max mana and gain 10 piety.

I would make it 25 piety boost, if not higher. Taurog is a piety farm deity who is easy to work with, so a permanent tradeoff doesn't make a lot of sense unless the number is quite high. By comparison, Dracul is a vindictive deity who is very stingy with piety, so blood tithe is a veritable oasis in a desert as far as easy piety is concerned. While there's potential for end-game antics with this tradeoff, that's equally true of Dracul.

Kinda bland, and strongly tilted towards Berserkers, Monks, and Rogues. Given that it has a tradeoff, that accumulating cost is probably too high, as well. I think we need to move away from "Taurog's boons lower your mana". Dracul no longer has the HP penalty associated with his boons, and I think Taurog needs to go the same direction. Leave the mana tradeoff as an option piety mechanism, but forcing it on characters just makes him non-viable in way too many situations.

Too good for monks and berserkers (who are stacking this on top of base resists) and too weak for everyone else. Also the same complaints as with the strength boon.

Piercing: Reduce all monsters physical resistance by 10% for 1 mp and 10 piety increasing by 20 each time.

Careful! As you've specified it, this one would have no effect on subdungeons or multi-stage bosses, which is often where you need it most. Instead, this should empower the character to bypass a certain % of physical resist, so the effect can be taken into subdungeons. Same issue with mana tradeoff.

Unstoppable Fury: Death protection for 25 piety increasing by 15 each time.

Probably would make it 20 + 10 per use. For most classes, it's not nearly as good as Blood Swell.

Champion: Become a Champion of Taurog and gain 30% damage and an additional base damage per level, but lose a mana each level for 100 piety.

This one screams "Berserkers and Monks only". That's what we need to move away from.

I'd go for something more along these lines:

Purge Weakness: Sacrifice 1 max mana to gain 25 piety, cannot reduce mana below 1Taurog's Armory (90 piety): Creates an entrance adjacent to the alter leading into a subdungeon containing Taurog's armory. Each item in the armory is cursed, but you can take as many as you can carry. Once you leave the armory, the door closes permanently behind you.Skullpicker: +8 base damage, +25% physical resist bypass, take damage whenever you cast a spell (mana cost x character level / 3)Will: +20% physical resist, must pay 33% mana when drinking a health potionGloat: +20% magic resist, lose 33% health when drinking a mana potionWereward: -2 damage received per character level, ignore up to 10 layers of corrosion, lose 1 mana whenever you take damageCliffstompers: +20% attack bonus, ignore up to 10 layers of weakening, cost of spells increases by 1 mana each time you cast (reset when you next make a melee attack).Unstoppable Fury (20 piety +15 per use): grant death protection and mana burns youCrazed Frenzy (10 piety + 10 per use): Gain +5 base attack, +30% bonus damage, +25% physical resist bypass and you are slowed. This effect ends when you next cast a spell or drink a potion. Effect cannot be stacked.Surging Spirit (60 piety): When at full mana you gain +20% bonus damage and +20% to both resistances.Brutal Onslaught (40 piety): You gain a stunning attack, causing any monster you attack to become slowed.

All the cool of the current Taurog, reworked penalties to appeal to different classes/strategies. All his boons are double-edged, some in ways that actually interfere with eachother (similar to Dracul's Bloodshield/Bloodhunger problem). This also keeps all the items in the game by combining them into a single boon, then giving them vastly different penalties so no single character could possibly find a way to ignore all their various downsides.

Last edited by Darvin on Sun Oct 09, 2011 6:50 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I'm of the opinion that big changes must happen to Taurog. He's a wasted alter in far too many situations, good for piety farming and nothing else. The fact that all his boons share the same tradeoff means that for many characters there are simply no boons that work, while for the Monk and Berserker there's not a big penalty to collecting them all.

Working well on the normal dungeons doesn't say much. Most normal dungeons can be cleared without breaking a sweat with any half-decent preparations. The monsters and bosses are fairly straightforward and don't pull any nasty tricks, the bosses seldom have strong attrition properties so you don't need to expend many resources, and taking home half a dozen medals is typical. Taurog's weaknesses start to really add up the moment you leave normal-land for the the hard dungeons, and they're mindbogglingly bad trades in vicious dungeons where giving up your spellcasting ability is signing your own death warrant.

A perfect example of why Taurog is ill-suited for hard and vicious missions is the Creeplight Ruins. The three-stager boss is going to test your staying power in a way that no normal difficulty boss will, and the third stage's physical resist is going to punish a Taurog worshipper horribly. Overall, you'd actually be stronger by not purchasing Taurog's boons. While there are some cases where he'll work (he shines against the Matron of Flame) they're the exception and are few and far between.

The one problem is stacking crazed frenzy could result in obscene damage from lev 10 berserkers (50 base+50=100 360% of 100=360 360+100=460! This could result in one hit killing herp the foreman before his bodyguards or a grimm's grotto tower of goo. Assuming you would not have any other items that gave you bonuses and you are not a human or orc.

The one problem is stacking crazed frenzy could result in obscene damage from lev 10 berserkers

Didn't intend for it to be stackable; it's one use at a time, and repeatable only in the sense that you can activate it again after its effects end. Clarifying my description...

On the other hand, I'm not that big a fan of having so many different "negatives" to keep track of. Dracul basically only has 2, this version of Taurog has... way too many.

True, that is a lot of negative effects to keep track of. That was the point to some extent, so that different combinations of items would appeal to different characters (rather than the current setup where all items either appeal to you or don't), and also to make obtaining the full armory balanced as a 90 piety boon by creating a swath of downsides.

That's true... unlike blood tithe there isn't a dropoff in the synergy with blood swell. Guess it'll need a higher accumulating cost. I still think 20 is a good starting point, but it should accumulate by +15 or +20. Anyways, shouldn't be nitpicking this too much. It is just a broad suggestion.